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How do you tell your children that they’re safe, when often children are not? How do you think “that would never happen to me”, even though every person it happens to never saw it coming? How do any of us march ahead when terrible things could happen to any one of us, at any time?

I am gutted by the news today. All those babies. All those parents hurting.

I don’t know how we should respond to such a thing.

I do know that we all say, hug your children close, we all say, we should remember what’s important, we all say, make the best of the time we have with the people we love, but. . . do we? Do we really? Even when we’re reminded how quickly our whole world could change, do we stop fretting about dumb stuff?

My seven year old stood next to me as I put that photo in the top of this entry, he said, wait, move the screen up, I want to see it better. “Oh, bunnies having Christmas,” he said, “how cute.” And I smooshed my face into his soft boy cheek and kissed him. There are never enough kisses. They grow up so fast, we all say. But, when we say that, we’re really casting a spell. Please, please, please. Let them grow up.

I am achingly sorry for the families of the children who died, for the unknowable void left behind.

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"And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.